A Different Entry
by Molten Mocha
Summary: Karakura is one off, if not the most, spiritually active town in the human world. Rukia Kuchiki, an unseated officer, is not officially ready for such an assignment. Even as Aizen drops the pitch and the council all but readily agrees, before he has had any need to support his statement. Someone else takes the stage.


I don't own Bleach or any related works. All of that belongs to Tite Kubo.

Author's note is down bellow.

 **XXX**

Karakura is one off, if not the most, spiritually active town in the human world. Rukia Kuchiki, an unseated officer, is not officially ready for such an assignment. Even as Aizen drops the pitch and the council all but readily agrees, before he has had any need to support his statement. Someone else takes the stage.

 **XXX**

Ichigo does not hope for a lot when he goes to see the little ghost girl. He's realistic in nature and he fully expects someone to have stolen or broken the offerings placed around the girls memorial.

That's fine. He can deal with that the moment he lays eyes on them.

What he doesn't expect is a fanatic worshipper who can apparently see the dead just as well as he can.

A man, dressed in a kimono and clearly seeing and talking to the girl he's not supposed to see nor talk to.

Ichigo doesn't have much room to criticize other people on what's normal but he reserves the right to feel on guard when he notices the man carrying a katana around in public.

He gets the feeling it's not a fake either.

When he walks closer, tense and wary, ready for a fight. The girl notices him and smiles brightly at him. Waving at him to come closer, unaware of the danger right in front of her.

Ichigo waves her over, wanting her as far away from this man as possible, when the man turns around and instantly places a hand on the girl's shoulder. Keeping her near him.

Ichigo freezes.

The man's gaze has that effect. His eyes boring into him and seemingly able to read his mind or the future in general.

Ichigo hears the flutter of cloth and suddenly the man is slowly walking towards him. The girl goes cross-eyed trying to stare at her forehead from which she is enveloped in a golden light and disappears.

"You can see me." The man states but Ichigo's mind is still in the past and blanks at what he's supposed to do now.

He wants to get angry. Yell at the man and demand he tell him what happened to the girl. His gaze is still freezing and the power he walks with makes him seem like a movie character brought to life. Inhumanly powerful while doing nothing but walking in a straight line.

There's another flutter of cloth and Ichigo's still outstretched hand is suddenly weighted by what looks like a pamphlet. Looks like one, because the situation would be somehow even weirder if it actually was a pamphlet for some reason.

"Read this." And without blinking, the man removes himself from Ichigo's sight and seemingly existence itself.

One moment he is there, the next he is gone.

Ichigo removes all pretence of going to school from his mind when he realizes that, yes. He was handed a pamphlet with basic information that is supposed to calm him down.

Ichigo scans over the first 10 lines and at the words 'government' and 'shinigami army' he moves home in a dead sprint.

Because holy shit there's more of them.

 **XXX**

The pamphlet is very basic. It explains the concept of shinigami, hollows, pluses, spirits and humans. A very over the top summation of their government, revealing nothing intrinsic and likely over-blowing as much as possible. And ends in a handy 10 step guide on what to do if confronted with either a spirit, hollow or shinigami.

Ichigo lowers the pamphlet and lets it rest on his chest as he stretches in his bed. He's read it over 10 times now and he's very sure that there's no hidden meaning that's he's been missing out on.

The pamphlet is very vague and basic by design. Clearly whoever these shinigami are beyond the 'protectors of the human world' as the pamphlet preaches, they don't want much to be known about themselves.

And they'd like to be deified if anyone does give it more thought.

This just puts them more on Ichigo's radar.

There's a flutter from his curtains as wind passes through them. Ichigo's mind leaps to his confrontation with the shinigami and he turns around on instinct. Muscles going tense and body already moving to a frozen state from the memory alone.

There's nothing there when he turns though. Nothing but the wind.

Ichigo sighs and gets out of bed. It won't do to be this jumpy and paranoid. Nor is lying in bed reading the same pamphlet over and over going to change anything.

He's never liked the extra difficulties dropped onto him and he doesn't like it that things have grown even more complicated.

But they have. So he'll deal with it.

Ichigo drops his head out of the window and into the cool night air for a moment. Enjoying the cool air and literally cooling off his head for a moment.

Maybe he should start going to the dojo again? Maybe take up kendo? Maybe google every word in the pamphlet to see if someone else has already made more discoveries then he has.

The fact that they have a pamphlet with information means that there must be others like himself out there. Enough to warrant an easier way of communicating information instead of mouth to mouth.

There's another flutter of cloth. One that Ichigo knows very, very well even after hearing it only once.

He looks down and his eyes bulge at the dark creature that is slowly dissipating. It's head cut in half and it's eyes looking around frantically as if it hasn't registered what happened to itself yet.

In front of it is the shinigami again. The same relaxed but alert posture. The same half lidded and frozen eyes.

The man looks up at him, impossibly feeling Ichigo's stare on him.

His eyelids droop ever so slightly, his gaze less frigid and more questioning.

Then he is gone again.

"You possess an abnormally high amount of reiryoku."

Standing right behind Ichigo in the middle of his room.

Ichigo has a seconds thought to jump out of his window but doesn't when he mentally argues that the shinigami would probably already be there before he reached the floor.

Talking as if teleportation was a normal everyday thing and honestly, how would Ichigo know that that wasn't the case for shinigami?

Ichigo has always been best when blunt and anger usually gets him there.

"Okay, no. Enough! Who the hell are you?" Ichigo starts shouting but then quickly regulates his voice so as to not alert the rest of the household.

The shinigami doesn't sigh but Ichigo does get the impression that he does. Internally, maybe mentally, some part of him is sighing. And he casts a quick look at the pamphlet still on Ichigo's bed.

Ichigo remembers the ridiculous 10 part plan of execution when coming in contact with the spiritual.

One of those steps being 'Don't disturb shinigami with their work.' and another being 'If asked, answer a shinigami's questions succinctly, without omitting details unless asked. Do not waver off topic.'.

Ichigo scowl like he knows best.

"You didn't ask a question."

"Then don't disturb shinigami with their work."

Ichigo is affronted for only 0.3 of a second before.

"Bakudō #4: Hainawa."

He's caught with a golden coloured rope and can't move a muscle.

Ichigo tries to speak but even though nothing above his shoulders is touched by the rope, not a muscle in his body makes to move.

The rope feels like lightning, tensing every muscle in his body and putting his face in a constant grimace with eyes closed tightly.

He can hear footsteps around him and he knows the shinigami is looking for something.

There's a sudden swipe at the air and Ichigo can feel his muscles relax again.

He opens his eyes with anger seared into them and his mouth opens with quite a lot of expletives ready for launch.

All he sees when he opens his eyes though, is a hand in front of them.

"Tanma Otoshi."

And then the world turns black.

 **XXX 1 day earlier XXX**

Gin is bored out of his mind. It's part 1039 off Aizen's master-plan and it seems to meet just as much resistance as the other 1038.

Which is, none worth mentioning.

Yet another captain's meeting, yet another delegation of the central 46, yet another monologue from Aizen that will inevitably end with Rukia Kuchiki being sent to Karakura. So she can get Urahara's Hogyoku stuffed in her. And maybe, probably since Aizen is counting on it, give her powers to Ichigo Kurosaki in the process.

Outwardly, Gin just continues to smile creepily and is pleased to see that not one of the lieutenants is taking it very well.

Inwardly he almost cringes at the stupidity of the government.

Aizen isn't even halfway through his speech and already the delegation is nodding their heads. Aizen could literally have stopped 8 sentences in and it would have sufficed. Even Ukitake is frowning and visibly thinking on a way to counter Aizen's arguments.

'No point to it.' Gin thinks. He doesn't care for Rukia Kuchiki, but he can see why this is such a bad idea. Regardless of the fact that Aizen has picked a hollow that outranks Rukia in every degree. Even if he hadn't, Karakura being one of the few spiritually active places in the human world would naturally summon hollows that are too powerful for any unseated officer.

For once though, Gin wishes that Aizen's plans didn't go to plan. Even if it will all end with him stabbing Aizen in the chest and watching the fucker disappear cell per cell.

"I disagree." Someone says and Gin is as surprised as everyone else in the room when it is Byakuya of all people to say that.

In hindsight he shouldn't be that surprised. He knows hands-on how to hide the fact that you care very deeply about someone on the outside, while still doing everything in your power to keep them safe in the shadows.

He does so for Rangiku and he recognized very early on that Byakuya does the same for Rukia. Albeit to a lesser degree.

Aizen's smirk hasn't left his smug face though. Although Gin is sure he didn't expect Byakuya (Ukitake more likely) he still has a list of reasons why it should be Rukia going down there.

"I'll go myself." Byakuya states.

And the matter is pretty much closed after that statement.

A captain can pretty much veto any mission whenever they wish, which almost never happens. Captains do have a lot of responsibilities and adding more work to them is never a thing on any of their agendas.

But when a captain does do it, it means 2 things. 1 the mission, however long it was supposed to take beforehand, will be resolved within a day. 2 there will be no loose ends and a 0% chance of failure.

Karakura was due for a good cleansing. Souls lingering on every street corner and hollows turning up every day, never staying long enough for an attack team since they could find a soul wandering the streets every other corner.

It would require a stationary force to start cleansing all the spirits in town and taking down any hollows that might show up to feast.

Or

A captain shunpoing every square inch, cleansing all the souls and killing every hollow present. No more food for hollows meant no hollows would show up, and all the smarter, more powerful ones would be right back to Hueco Mundo when they feel a captain showing up.

So yeah, it's over. Matter closed. Ukitake could never do such a thing because of his health alone but.

Byakuya.

Yeah, sure, done. Over and out.

Gin knows it is when Aizen's smirk drops and for a moment he can just see the gears running in the man's head. Completely at a loss.

Gin actually snickers out loud and he doesn't care that everyone is looking at him.

It's sad that it is only a small set back.

...

Unless Byakuya meats Ichigo and gets close enough, long enough, for him to notice the kid's absurd levels of reiatsu.

Then he'd take the kid back to Soul Society and that would give Aizen an aneurysm.

He's allowed to dream.

 **XXX**

I have no idea why I'm writing this but I've always wanted to try my hand at writing. So, yeah. There you go.

This was the first idea that popped into my head that could potentially turn into a fully fledged story.

Anyway, thanks a lot for reading! Hope you enjoyed it! Be on the lookout for more coming soon!


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